With the recent scandal rocking WWE, I have thought of several scenarios which could play out.

MCMAHON FORCED TO RESIGN

As WWE is a publicly traded company, their primary responsibility is to appease it’d shareholders. If WWE’s corporate sponsors threaten to walk away unless McMahon leaves, the shareholders can hold an emergency shareholder meeting and force the Board of Directors to issue a vote of “no confidence” in McMahon leadership and force him to relinquish his duties as Chairman and CEO.

CORPORATE SPONSORS LEAVE

Even if McMahon is forced to resign/retire, WWE’s corporate sponsors could decide to end their sponsorship deals and cause a huge financial blow. These corporate sponsors include not only advertisers such as M&M/Mars (Snickers) and Old Spice, but also TakeTwo Interactive who may decide that they will no longer publish WWE video games. It’s also a possibility that TakeTwo could even pull all WWE video games from Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo, and even Valve’s Steam service.

WWE FORCED TO SELL OR GO BANKRUPT

If WWE loses its sponsorship deals and its contract with NBC/Universal to stream on their Peacock service, WWE may be forced to sell the company. If WWE would be unable to find a buyer, they could be forced to go into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection or even Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation.

PRO WRESTLING COULD BE TAKEN OFF TV

WWE is synonymous with professional wrestling. This scandal could force media giants such as Turner and AXS to become wary of having professional wrestling on their networks and end up canceling all wrestling programs from their networks. This could cause a trickle down effect which could put other corporate wrestling promotions such as All Elite Wrestling and Impact Wrestling to either drastically scale back operations or be shut down. In Impact Wrestling’s case, they are owned by Anthem Media Group which owns AXS, the network which currently airs Impact.

At this moment, it is too soon to tell what will happen. At the bare minimum, I believe the entire McMahon family – Paul Levesque included – will be forced out with Nick Khan assuming the positions of Chairman and CEO. However, it’s entirely possible that due to the nature of this scandal, Nick Khan may not be able to save the company and may have to sell.